1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the transmission of data over a wireless network and, more particularly, to transmission of aggregated data packets.
2. Description of the Related Art
In wireless network communication, data communication is often performed by sending one or more streams of data packets. Typically, each communication packet will include overhead. This overhead can include protocol information, e.g. source and destination addressing, size, and data integrity check values. As the number of packets increases, overhead can become a significant burden.
One wireless network contention protocol, called Carrier Sense Multiple Access (CSMA), listens to a network to avoid collisions. Specifically, before any data is transmitted, CSMA broadcasts a signal to the network to listen for possible collisions and cautions other devices to refrain from broadcasting. Unfortunately, in networks that employ CSMA, detecting a clear channel further adds to the effective overhead of data transmission and is especially wasteful if many small packets are transmitted.
Therefore, a need arises for an efficient means of transmitting data on a wireless network.